CARRIE, 7 March:

Carrie was on a Skype call with her dying grandmother while prepping vegetables for Michael’s feeding therapy.

She wasn’t sure Hélène could see her, to be honest. Carrie’s own mother—Deborah, who was at the nursing home in France right now—had said that the 88-year-old woman’s sight was almost gone, too. 

It didn’t help that Hélène Delacroix appeared to be half asleep most of the time. But if your kidneys were giving out, like the rest of your body … Carrie thought grimly, then perhaps it was a blessing that you were not too aware of what was happening.

It was a bright, dry spring day in Yuma, and the clock was ticking toward the time when Carrie needed to leave to pick up Michael from his special school—on foot since her husband was using the car for work. 

The time difference between Arizona and Normandy, Hélène’s long periods of comatose sleep, and logistical challenges (like moving the old woman between the hospital in Le Havre and the nursing home—now practically a hospice—on the opposite side of the estuary) … all of that had made these precious 30 minutes before Carrie’s school run the only viable window to speak with her grandmother today.

And who knew if it would be the last time.

“You have to talk louder, Caroline,” Deborah said, staring into the camera in front of Hélène’s blissful wrinkled face. “She can’t hear you.”

“Je l’entends très bien.” The old woman made a grunt of protest and stirred in the bed, but her eyes were closed.

“Great. It would also help if you would look into the camera, mother,” Deborah said, the annoyance in her voice a notch up. Deborah kept speaking in English.

Carrie sliced the cucumber slowly into four equally big pieces. Perhaps Michael would taste it this time when he came home and had his after-school meal?

“Comment … as-tu dormi cette nuit, Mamie?” Carrie’s French wasn’t as sharp as it had been when they had come down from the Inner Hebrides to visit Mamie in Honfleur on the Normandy coast, every summer. All those years ago …

She remembered her father’s surprise at how quickly she had learned some workable French, even though her grandmother spoke English quite well. Having been married to her Utah grandfather for 30 years and lived at least half of them in the States, made that a necessity. Not many people in Salt Lake City were fluent in the difference between passé simple and passé composé.

Carrie’s talent for languages had once been a great source of hope—like so many of her other skills. But after her parents’ divorce, Carrie chose the ‘safe route’ of law school, only to drop out and throw her life away in the process, undone by her personal messes.

Your skills were only as valuable as your resilience—a truth Carrie knew all too well.

A bitter truth …

She had never been able to accept her failures or embrace a life centered around family the way Mamie had.

Even after Carrie’s grandfather disowned Deborah—for reasons that seemed both ridiculous and callous to Carrie (like secretly having a boyfriend when the family first lived together in France)—even then … Hélène still stayed by George Sawyer’s side.

*

In 1983 George had a stroke and was confined to bed for three months before he died. Hélène was there around the clock.

“On ne renonce pas à quelqu’un.” 

“You just don’t give up on someone.”

Hélène had said exactly that in the Christmas of 1995, long after George’s passing, when she mustered the courage to fly to the States alone and visit Deborah and Carrie in their rundown apartment in suburban Cleveland (their new home after Deborah’s failed “romantic relocation” to Scotland).

They had been talking briefly about Carrie’s Scottish father, because Hélène had asked who was with him for Christmas this year, and her tone carried the faintest hint of criticism.

It had been less than a year since Deborah had demanded a divorce. She got it in July, and then she and Carrie moved back to the US for good in August.

Everybody understood, of course. And everyone understood why Carrie had to go to the US.

Her father was an irrepentant alcoholic.

But he was also a Falklands veteran who had barely survived.

Carrie’s grandfather had barely survived the Battle of the Bulge. That winter in the Ardennes never left his heart.

Deborah frowned at her mother’s casual remark, then asked if they wanted more cookies.

And so they sat, all three, on the same big, old couch in Deborah’s combined living room and bedroom, watching a forgettable ’90s crime show, while some neighbor’s TV or radio blared Mariah Carey through an open window to the yard.

They chatted on, and sipped their lemonade (Hélène had never officially renounced her Mormon conversion).

But it didn’t feel bad.

Quite the contrary.

As the evening progressed teenage Carrie realized that, at least, they were together.

They were still a family.

A part of her world was intact after her parents’ divorce.

And perhaps that had been what her grandmother truly had given her, even if she lived an ocean away from that time on.

It was a promise that no matter what life threw at you there would be constants.

Hélène had stayed with her grandfather, for his sake— and for Deborah’s.

She also kept in contact with both Carrie’s father and Deborah after their divorce in the years to come. 

She was their constant.

*

Carrie stopped slicing. 

The cucumbers were perfect now, or at least she reckoned so. But you never knew with her son—with Michael.

Autism saw the strangest fractures and disturbances in the patterns of life.

Sometimes it was quaint and at other times it gave you anxiety during nights, like when Michael completely stopped eating except bread, which he still felt safe about. A particular brand of bread. But still—one last thing.

After that, if he ever stopped eating that—the great unknown…

Who invented such punishments for parents, that their children would have those… challenges?

“Can you move it a little closer?” Hélène asked suddenly in English. Deborah shifted the tablet, setting it on the duvet over Hélène’s stomach—or so it seemed to Carrie. It wobbled slightly, but Deborah kept hold of it. The old woman didn’t raise her hands; she didn’t seem to have the strength.

“Here,” Deborah said.

“Merci.” Hélène opened her eyes fully.

Carrie put down her knife and leaned over the kitchen counter. Her own iPad was perched on the window sill.

Outside a barren garden, or what went for it here in the desert city, it stared back at her.

Spring would not bring any more time to plant something that could resist the heat that was slowly but surely coming to the Southwest.

“It’s good to see you, child,” Hélène continued. “How is that lovely husband of yours?”

“Working, as always,” Carrie smiled faintly. Her grandmother was so close. She wished she could reach out and stroke her cheek.

“Mamie—” Carrie continued, but keeping the rest in English “… I am sorry I can’t come over. You know how difficult it is for Michael if I am away. My trip last fall was … hard for him.”

She looked away.

Why did Jon have to work all the time? If only …

But no, it wasn’t his fault she couldn’t go France and stay there with Mamie for … as long as it took.

… It was hers.

And yet, what choice did she have?

Last fall when she was away for a week, Michael had bit himself, cried all the time and almost stopped eating. The teachers said it jad set back his therapy for months.

Carrie was officially unemployed again now, yes, but she had to look after Michael.

An autistic child who reacted to change—any change—like shell shock.

So Carrie had to be at work round the clock, even when Michael was at school. When he was at able to—that was when Carrie had time to prepare his therapy. And wash a pile of pants he had peed in. And a thousand things more.

Hélène’s voice was faint but clear. “You do not have to explain. My great-grandson needs you.”

“But Marcus says he will pay for the ticket to France, and …”

“Your mother’s husband should concentrate on not working himself to another heart attack,” Hélène scoffed. “Lest he end up like me 20 years before his time.”

Deborah could be heard sighing in the background. But Hélène ignored her.

“You should not worry about me,” she continued. “And we should enjoy talking.” She coughed a little, then closed her eyes again. “Tell me how everything else goes in the United States. I hear you have a new president.”

Carrie sighed. “You heard right. It is … incredible.” She glanced at the clock. 10 minutes. Good lord … 

“It should have been Elder Romney,” Hélène said. “I always thought well of the man.”

Deborah sighed again in the background. “We don’t call him that anymore, Maman. And that title, for missionaries barely a day over 20 … It’s just one example of why the Church of Latter-Day—”

“Please, not now.” Hélène’s voice became firmer. “It’s still my Church.”

“I know,” Deborah said, through tight lips.

“ … However, I want a little Catholic ceremony here in Honfleur,” Hélène continued, seemingly oblivious to Deborah (and politics). “Père Lampard will understand this and take care of the arrangements. He was always sympathetic, even to an old defector like me.”

“Maman—” Deborah tried again, but Hélène shushed her like she was a child and not a woman in her sixties.

“I want a small ceremony,” she continued, “like the one we had for my Maman and Papa after the Liberation—even though they were in some camp grave or other,” she continued. “But send my ashes to the Salt Lake City Cemetary. I want them buried next to your father.”

She opened her eyes fully and looked straight at Carrie, through the screen, over thousands of miles away, but so close. “Next to your grandfather.”

Tears began to sting Carrie’s eyes.

Five minutes left.

“I … Comme j’aimerais pouvoir être là … ” she said, her voice thick.

“But you can’t be here,” Hélène said, “not this time.”

“If I had not gone to Argentina with Dad last fall maybe Jon could still have PTO to … ” Carrie started.

“Your father needed it,” Hélène said, “to mend his war wounds. And to mend fences with you. I know what I am talking about.”

Carrie wiped her eyes about the same time she had a flash memory of the only time her grandfather had been angry with her.

One of the few things about him she could even remember.

That old box with his medals in the bottom of the closet.

That box … was not for her to play with. Or see.

“Besides,” Hélène continued, chuckling. “You don’t know when God will take me home. Maybe he will keep me around for much longer, just to annoy your mother.”

“Maman!” Deborah seemed about to take the tablet away because the image on the screen suddenly wobbled and there was something in French, that Carrie couldn’t quite follow.

“All right,” she could hear Deborah say in the background, “but you will have to rest soon.”

“I will rest in my own good time,” Hélène said, and suddenly her face appeared again, clearly, filling the screen. 

The wrinkles, her thin skin, and the white hair … all of it seemed like a painting to Carrie— but of somebody else.

Somebody she had imagined as a child would be old, would look like that,

But not the woman holding Carrie’s hand at the Plage du Butin beach, as the little girl gleefully chased the surf, at a safe distance.

“You give my love to Emma, Michael, and your husband,” Hélène said. “Tell them I love them all.”

Tears trickled down Carrie’s cheeks. “I will. I have … to go get Michael. But can we talk tomorrow?”

“Depends on your mother and my niece.” Hélène smiled. “They take care of everything now— I feel quite pampered.”

Carrie attempted to find the joke amusing, but nothing felt funny anymore. Not her life—with so many years ahead in what felt like a prison. Not the fact that her grandmother was dying. Not that she couldn’t simply go and stay with her for as long as necessary.

“I’m sure they do,” Carrie said. “Take care … of everything.”

“Au revoir mon trésor.” Before Carrie could do it herself, to her surprise, her grandmother reached out and gingerly turned off the connection.

She arranged cucumber slices on the plastic plate, positioning it on the kitchen table behind her. Then she got the extra water and bread. And diapers.

Quickly. Into the bag. Coat on. Find Keys.

The plate would be waiting for their return—always a delicate transition when Michael would need all the lights turned on, even during the daytime, the moment he got in.

Then he would perform his typing rituals at the laptop before she might, possibly, convince him to sit down and try eating something other than bread

As she left the house, Carrie’s mind spun with calculations—flight plans, shifting schedules, the impossible logistics. Could her husband trade shifts to give her time? LA, then Paris, then Honfleur, and back—maybe in a weekend?

… If the new nanny was available on short notice.

… If it wasn’t such a nightmare having no family nearby—or worse, knowing that even if they were, they couldn’t handle Michael, not night and day.

… If she could ever forget the sound of him crying over Skype last year while they were in Argentina.

… But her father had been so grateful, and something precious had been mended.

… And now something else was about to be torn apart forever.

Was there any—any way at all—out of this family prison, this life as a special needs mother, just long enough to at least attend the ceremony in France, maybe even see her grandmother before …  

Or was Salt Lake City Cemetary the only option? At least she could get there and back in a day …

Her thoughts chased her relentlessly until she had to take a pill just to steady herself. She made it to the bus, and pushed forward to school—but then realized she’d forgotten Michael’s special stroller. 

Panic surged as she turned back, rushing to grab it. 

She called the school, apologizing for being late, knowing Michael would be waiting anxiously by the fence. Would he cry a lot today or just a little? And had she remembered all the bread…?

She returned to the bus stop with the stroller, and then because no one was there, she sat down and cried.

But when the bus came, she got up. She had to go on. Somebody counted on her and no matter how hard it was there was no other way.

You just don’t give up on someone.

She had learned that from the best.

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91-09032025

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Cover photo by Jordan Whitt on Unsplash

Winter in Cleveland photo by Nick Artman on Unsplash

Old woman photo by Laurin Grether on Unsplash

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Soundtrack: Deep Forrest – “Sweet Lullaby”

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From the island of the dead, their spirit will look after us

And take care of us like royalty, with all the wisdom they’ll find there